The Media's Lying Lips

According to the U.K.’s Met Office, 2022 was the hottest year on record for the U.K. Take me back forty years or so and I would have taken this for gospel. The Met Office might get tomorrow’s weather wrong but you could rely on its expertise and objectivity when it came to reporting temperature records. A similar sentiment applied to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and, no doubt, to the National Weather Service in the U.S., and to other national weather bureaus. Recall, too, if your experience is anywhere near the same as mine, that numbers of mainstream newspapers and broadcasters provided the news in a more-or-less factual way; or, in any event, we thought that they did. And now?

Now, I don’t trust anything I read, hear or see. Sadly, I’m sorry to say, this does not so much reflect on the competence of various government and news organizations; but, instead, on their allegiance to the truth. I believe that they have no compunction about lying to bolster their agendas. This takes two forms. Burying inconvenient facts and presenting fiction as though it were fact. What’s going on?

You might say that lies have always infected the public square. True enough. But this caveat reminds me of passage from the novel No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. Sheriff Tom Bell contrasts the reported transgressions of schoolboys in the nineteen-thirties with those of his day (1980). It went from talking in class, chewing gum and running in the hallways to rape, arson, murder, drugs and suicide. He drolly reckons there’s a big difference between rapin' and murderin' people and chewin' gum. I reckon too that lying has taken a big uptick in its prevalence and audacity over recent decades.

The other day, I saw George Santos, the GOP’s congressman-elect for New York’s 3rd district being interviewed by Tulsi Gabbard on Fox News. He had lied egregiously about his background to voters. He squirmed and dissembled rather than admit it. Jason Whitlock, interviewed later, made (for me) the telling point that when God isn’t thought to be around, lying for advantage is no big deal. Various clips were shown of President Biden lying his head off. Simply making things up about his past life, without any apparent shame; bare-faced. This self-proclaimed Catholic clearly doesn’t believe God is listening. Neither today do most of the political, corporate and media class. That’s the world in which we live. It is tailor made for stoking climate change alarmism, as it for stoking Covid hysteria.

Last year, on Friday December 9, Australia recorded its lowest summer temperature on record. Minus 7⁰C in the Perisher Valley in the state of New South Wales. You had to dig out the info. I had to be told about it by a conservative friend. I asked others I know. None knew. Not surprising. It wasn’t emblazoned on the news. They’d all heard of a heat wave hitting the northern part of Australia. Most of my fellow churchgoers watch the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and read the Sydney Morning Herald. They definitely heard about the heatwave; which, of course, was associated with "climate change."

Suppressing inconvenient facts is one reason despots control the media. No need in the West. Enlightened, selective self-censorship dominates the media landscape. The role of the fourth estate to hold governments and the powerful to account is dead. Unless, that is, Donald Trump is in power; and no doubt (hopefully in 2025) Ron DeSantis. The fourth estate is now predominantly an arm of the leftist-green coalition of governments, activists and rent-seeking carpetbaggers. Selective censorship is complemented by the publication of artful misinformation.

Every extreme weather-related event – heatwaves, droughts, floods, cyclones, bushfires – is attributed to "climate change," even though those pushing this tendentious line must know that such events have invariably been equaled or exceeded in their intensity and frequency in the recorded past. Such information is readily available. They simply lie, and blatantly. In Australia, the lie stretches to the persistently-cultivated ludicrous proposition that the bush fires of 2019-20 and the recent floods are attributable to the previous government’s relative inaction on climate change. Yet, Australia could revert to prehistoric times tomorrow and those maniacally monitoring emissions wouldn’t notice.

The only disservice I can recall Ron DeSantis making to public debate was his assurance that there would be “no more noble lies” in the course of dealing with Covid. He was much, much too kind. The so-called noble lies were just plain old despicable lies. Lies about the effectiveness and safety of vaccines in the service of profits for Big Pharma and its lobbyists and hangers on. Lies which created the pretense that the disease put healthy children and people at material risk; and that useless lockdowns and masks were absolutely vital. All in the service of exerting power over populations and punishing dissidents. A practice run for the real plague of communists-cum-fascists who have infiltrated, permeated, saturated, wormed their way into governments, corporations and academia; and for their flag carrier, the World Economic Forum. Their lingua franca: newspeak.

Against the Great Reset

Now on sale.

I want to come back to Christianity. Do the climate and Covid liars feel comfortably lying because they don’t believe in God and therefore put their agenda above all ethical considerations. It must help. But is that all there is to it? A passage in Romans is apropos: Romans 1:28 (NASB version):

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a depraved mind, to do those things that are not proper.

Don’t want to get too theistic. But, under what circumstances would those in positions of power and influence, who are intelligent, who have access to information, set out deliberately to deceive and appear not to have the least qualms about it? If a complete sociopathic absence of integrity is not a sign of abandonment by God, what exactly is it? How else can it be comprehended?

Bishop Klaus and the Reset Religion

Under the mastery of a global elite, the World Economic Forum is out to remake the world. To this end, as I have previously noted, its 1973 Manifesto is a tad less ambitious than is its 2020 Manifesto. No doubt any future manifesto will be bolder still. Unnerving? Indeed. For context, though not for peace of mind, turn to a quite different manifesto: A Christian Manifesto by Francis Schaeffer. I doubt Schaeffer had Klaus Schwab in mind when writing his manifesto, first published in 1981. The Great Reset had not come of age. On the other hand, as a matter of pure speculation, I wonder whether perhaps Schwab has read Schaeffer.

As humanism supplants Christianity, Shaeffer writes, the freedoms and prosperity which Western civilization owes to Christianity are taken for granted. True enough. Among many in the increasingly secular West you’ll find a hangover of lots of Christian moral precepts, with little accompanying insight into whence they came. Needless to say, anchorless precepts are disposable as circumstances dictate. Then it’s a lottery as to what comes next.

Humanism can create any number of moral orders. It’s a bootstraps creed, susceptible to the politics of the day. Things can go badly wrong. We don’t have to go to the brutal excesses of history; say, to the French revolutionary Reign of Terror or the Holocaust or Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Not comparing, but how about the wanton killing of millions of healthy unborn babies or the (demonic) chemical and physical maiming of mentally-disturbed teenagers, confused about their sexual identity. Evidently, today’s humanist moral order finds this not just acceptable but righteous. Humanism is truly a flexible creed. Who knows where it will land tomorrow.

What would Erasmus do?

Shaeffer “guesses” that whatever flavor it takes, it will likely end in some form of “elite authoritarianism.” He is eerily prescient about the form such authoritarianism will take. He points particularly to the emergence of what he calls a “technocratic elite.” And approvingly quotes American physicist and science historian Gerard Holton.

More and more frequently, major decisions that profoundly affect our daily lives have a large scientific or technological content…if the laymen cannot participate in decision making, he will have to turn himself over, essentially blind, to a hermetic elite, Margaret Mead wrote about scientists elevated to the status of priests… now there’s a name for this elevation… From the point of view of John Locke, the name is slavery.

And haven’t we effectively become vassals, if not already slaves? When it’s claimed that ninety-seven percent of climate scientists say that the science is settled— a science we can’t begin to understand—then what choice do we have but to fall into line? Sure, it’s not nearly ninety-seven percent, but it is the received wisdom. And it has the unqualified support of almost all politicians; all media hacks; the majority of corporate big-wigs; and, to boot, activists of pedigree aplenty: Hollywood stars; King Charles; David Attenborough; Al Gore; Bill Gates; Klaus Schwab; Greta Thunberg; and many others. Ask your next-door neighbors about the cumulative greenhouse effect of CO2 and of its radiative forcing. Blank look. Ask them whether climate change is a serious even existential problem. Chances are they’ll be onboard.

Among laymen, it’s only an incorrigible few (of us) "deniers" who have the temerity to question "the science." The rest simply follow the script. And so be it; if that means replacing reliable and affordable sources of energy with intermittent and costly forms of energy; and, soon -- wait for it -- having smart meters compulsorily installed in our homes, giving the authorities the ability to monitor our power usage and cut us off at will. I’d say that degree of servility is close enough to slavery. However, it needed another group of scientists, in this case medical scientists, to close out the game.

A disease threatening only a relatively small cohort—those (generally aged) with multiple serious co-morbidities—became universally deadly in the mouths of public health experts. In turn, this allowed authorities to close businesses; to lock us in our homes; to prevent us visiting our sick or dying relatives; to prevent us attending church services; to pepper spray, fire rubber bullets and arrest us if we dared protest; to make us wear face masks; and to make us accept experimental vaccinations, by otherwise preventing us from travelling, participating in civil society, and from working. So extraordinary was it that it’s hard to believe it happened. But happen it did.

Hail, victory!

Would Shaeffer have been incredulous? Perhaps not. He foresaw tyrannous outcomes when societies turn away from God-given inalienable rights and adopt bespoke humanistic values in their stead.

"Scientists" called the tune for your neighbors. They aren't epidemiologists. Each day medical experts were rolled out to present the grim news of hospitalizations, deaths, and the virulent, ever-mutating, "deadly" virus. Each day they were told that disobeying senseless diktats would result in hospitals being overrun; would put themselves at grave risk and, cruelly, their friends and neighbors and their aging parents or grandparents.

The lesson that Schwab and his elite Davos co-conspirators have learnt, if they were in any doubt, is that science can be wielded to push common people around and control them. And they need to be controlled for their own good. Moreover, if indeed the elites (or some of them) have read Shaeffer then they know that the absence of Christianity serves their cause. The more humanism dominates societies, the easier it will be to impose a set of values and moral code to suit the political agenda of liege lords. Serfdom revisited. Saving the planet and warding off diseases will require fealty.

Will science play ball? These days science is for sale. Research dollars call the tune. The billions upon billions spent on researching the state of the Great Barrier Reef is an exemplar. The Reef is in rude good health. That won’t do. That won’t bring in the money. It’s threatened by climate change? Got it in one.

When Churchmen Become Apparatchiks

What happens when Christianity meets government tyranny? Does a Christian have to fall into line? What happens when a Christian warrior meets Covid-inspired tyranny? In that case, in the Australian state of New South Wales, tyranny wins.

Back in September 2020, Gladys Berejiklian, then premier of New South Wales, ordained that us churchgoers could worship again, provided we observed social distancing rules and refrained from hymn singing. Subsequently, we’ve been locked out entirely. That’s by the way.

The lesson of the day at my Anglican church was taken from St Paul’s letter to the Romans (13:1-5). The message conveyed by the minister, and certainly received by the congregation, was unmistakable in the circumstances. Disobeying the rules was not just a rebellion against the diktats of Ms Berejiklian but against God’s wishes.

"Leadership": former NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

When Jeff Sessions was Attorney General, and under attack, rightly or wrongly, for separating families who had illegally crossed the southern border, he also invoked the bible: “I would cite you the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.” Sessions, a United Methodist, was no doubt taking a lead from the teachings of his church.

It’s a common enough refrain from churchmen. They construe parts of the New Testament, Titus (3:1-2), Hebrews (13:17), 1 Peter (2:13-14); but, principally, Romans 13, as an instruction to obey the law whatever is the character of the law. It’s nonsense; both theologically and as a matter of common sense.

The passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans begins, “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.” But instructively, it ends by referring to the need to submit to the authorities as being “a matter of conscience.” Conscience is surely a manifestation of God’s law within us. To a Christian, what else is it? And Peter and his fellow apostles (in Acts 5:29) make the position clear: “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”

The Old Testament has numbers of confirmatory examples. For example, the midwives (in Exodus 1:15-17) disobeying Pharaoh by delivering Jewish male babies alive. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (in Daniel 3 :12-18) refusing to bow before King Nebuchadnezzar’s golden idol.

As for common sense, are we to believe that brave Christian families should have obeyed the law and handed in Jewish families to the Gestapo rather than hide them? Other examples abound which test the supposed biblical rule of needing to obey the law and find it wanting. Thus, there is no rule. Laws and their prosecution are no more above disdain than are other spheres of human action.

Martin Luther King Jr. put it well in his letter to white clergymen, written from Birmingham Jail on 16 April 1963:

A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law…One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Leadership.

A tyrannous law can be flouted in good conscience. And nowhere is the Covid-inspired tyranny more evident than it is in Australia. Unlike America and Europe, we have no islands of reason. No Florida; no Sweden. Everyone is onboard. There’s no political opposition; no media opposition. Governments easily get away with senseless restrictions on liberty. The police, their vassals, get away with thuggery, as we have seen most evidently and most disgustingly in Melbourne.

Much touted. Monday October 11. Freedom Day in NSW. I walk past my local pub in a suburb of Sydney. See crowds of youngish people through the doors and windows. None by the look of them at risk from Covid yet all, I know, are fully vaccinated. Part of the in-crowd. Alas, on the outer, I walk on.

I receive an email from my city club. “Welcome back,” it says. “I’m not welcome back at all.” I reply, sullenly.

Have coffee at my local café on so-called “Freedom Day.” My credentials unchecked, I daringly break the law by sitting and ordering a coffee. As a cautionary step, as a lawbreaker, I order my coffee in a takeaway cup and sit at an outside table so that I can quickly move off should the cops come around. Want to avoid a $1,000 fine (yes, that’s three zeros). That was yesterday. Today, I’m moved on. No longer welcome. No seat for me. So, this is what apartheid is like.

It comes to this. Infected people who are vaccinated are free to mingle and infect others. Uninfected, unvaccinated, people who pose no risk to others are barred from mingling. This is probably illegal, offending Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act 1992. It is illogical. And it is, most certainly, unconscionable and may well be in breach of the Nuremberg Code.

There was a reason for this, you know.

Circumstances affect cases. It’s been said often. It bears repeating. Covid presents no serious risk to healthy people. The vaccines are experimental in so far as they have not undergone five to ten years of clinical trials. They are leaky. They do not sterilize the virus. Those vaccinated still catch the virus and pass it on. The effectiveness of the vaccines in preventing serious illness quickly wanes.

On what proper basis then is there justification for the momentous step of making and prosecuting laws (diktats) which discriminately deny inalienable rights to those who make a personal decision not to get vaccinated? I can’t think of one. To me it is tyranny pure and simple.

Cometh the Christian warrior, the new state premier of NSW, Dominic Perrottet. He’s a self-proclaimed conservative; a Catholic; and a family man with six children. He’d previously expressed opposition to vaccine passports. Yet, he is the first to introduce them in Australia. Sure, he just followed the plan laid down by his predecessor Ms Berejiklian, who resigned under a cloud. But he could have stopped it. He didn’t. Tyranny prevailed.

Like Perrottet, I’m a Christian; and usually law abiding. But I have no respect for the diktats which rule my life in Sydney. I disobey the law when I think I can get away with it. My only concern is to avoid being caught and fined. I suffer no moral compunction, no pangs of conscience. I am, for the moment, a free man.